I know. I was just trying to tag along with the news. What I really think though is this new wearable computing stuff like the watches that are now coming out….are truly something to watch. What I mean by that is something that you look at. Why was a watch called a watch in the first place? Maybe our smartphones should have been called watches.

Apparently the word watch was not the first word used to describe that time piece on the wrist. It was wristlet. Wikipedia has a couple of different theories on why the word watch came about though. One of them makes more sense to me and it has to do with people who were on watch. See how I can tie this into vision 🙂 They were watchmen and used their wrist time pieces to keep track of their shift. Maybe they looked at them a lot like people do their smartphones these days.

I kept reading through the wikipedia article and found out something interesting about analog watches. You can use them to figure out which way is north or south….during the day of course. There’s an easy way to do that at night. I hope you all know about the north star (polaris). It’s faint but always there and two points on the big dipper always line up with that north star and they are always there because they are circumpolar stars (they are always there all day and night, rotating). You mostly need to be in the northern hemisphere to see them however.

Back to how to figure north and south on an analog wristwatch. Aim the hour hand at the sun. Then look for 12 on your watch. Halfway between the 12 and where you lined up the hour hand will point south. Use 1 instead of 12 during daylight savings. Now I know which way is generally south. The sun is never really directly overhead even though it comes close sometimes. It’s usually in the southern half (hah! always I should have said) of the sky for us northerners. But you can’t point directly south that way so using an analog phone (that has the right time on it when you’re lost in the ocean) will point you south and opposite that is north.

One more thing about time. If you forgot all your watches and your smartphone battery died, you can tell how much daylight you have left before sunset. If you hold you arm out and count how many fingers in between the sun and the horizon, multiply how many fingers that takes by 15. Basically, each finger is worth approximately 15 minutes. Keep your thumb out of the way…it’s too short!

Let’s see what kinds of technology people will start watching and wearing on their wrists besides fitbits.